Hat pulled low over mean, beady eyes, a smoldering hand-rolled ciga-reet dangling from the corner of a cruel mouth, Cullen Pickett leaned against the most distant prop on the opposite end of the porch from brother Priest. The man was totally unaware that Boz Tatum stood behind him, a buckshot-charged coach gun leveled at his murderous guts.
Roscoe, oldest and widely proclaimed by those who knew the family as the most dangerous of the slavering pack of human animals, rocked in the stifling afternoon breezes. He pushed the leading edge of his broad-brimmed, palm-leaf sombrero away from sun-tortured eyes.
“Just be goddamned. Truly is you, ain’t it, Dodge,” he said. “Heard you’d been outta circulation for a spell now. Hell, at first, we all thought you ’uz dead. Fact is, figure as how damned near everyone in this part of Texas thought you ’uz dead. Know we all hoped so leastways.”
Wind-dried lips curled off my teeth in a tight grin. “Sure do hate to disappoint a man like you, Roscoe. But you’ve gone and thrown your saddle on the wrong horse. I’m still very much alive, as you can readily see.”
The leader of the Pickett bunch let out a honking, derisive grunt, glanced at each of his lesser brothers, chuckled, then said, “Truth is I’m gladder’n hell you’re still with us, Dodge. Cause that’s gonna give me a chance to polish up my reputation by killin’ the hell out of you myself.”
Then, the stupid bastard made quite a production of rolling up his right shirtsleeve. He cut a quick glance down at the bone-gripped pistol pressed against his left hip and said, “See this here silver-plated, scroll-engraved, Colt layin’ ’cross my belly, Ranger Lucius ‘By God’ Dodge? Well, I’m gonna snatch ’er out shortly and blast the hell outta you, you irritatin’, badge-totin’ son of a bitch. Gonna use yer perforated hide for a flour sifter when I’m done.”
I snorted back at him, then said, “That a fact?”
“Damned right. Natural fact. Been hearin’ all kinda stories and tall tales ’bout you and that Winchester of yours for several years now. How fast and deadly you were with it and all. Never believed any a them silly-assed fables myself. Ain’t no man alive can crank one a them long guns fast as I can draw and fire. Jus’ been bidin’ my time, waitin’ for a chance like this to come my way.”
“Looking to put more notches on your gun, Roscoe?” I offered.
“Never pass up a chance to rub out law bringers like you, Dodge. And, bless my britches, if you don’t stroll right up here askin’ fer me to come on out here and give me the pleasure of killin’ yuh.”
I let his more-than-stupid comment pass without replying.
Several seconds of silence flew by, then he said, “You know, when me and the brothers looked out the door just now, Dodge, swear I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Thought to myself, well, son of a bitch, this must be your lucky day, Roscoe. Truth is, you can’t even begin to imagine how much I’m gonna enjoy puttin’ four or five smokin’ holes in your law-bringin’ ass.”
Squiggly shadows had got unnaturally long when I swung the Winchester around with one hand. Leveled the muzzle up on the man’s chest as I steadied the weapon by grasping the forearm. “Best throw all your pistols in the dirt right now, boys. Give yourselves up, so I can take you to Del Rio for trial and suitable hanging. Any of you go and do anything stupid and all three of you’ll end up under ground just like those poor folks you murdered out on Devils River earlier this morning.”
Priest Pickett’s foot slipped off the barrel top. The heavily booted appendage hit the plank porch with a resounding thump and the amber-colored liquor bottle slid from the man’s already questionable grip. The container bounced on the crude pile of wobbly boards beneath his feet, sprayed alcohol from the jug’s open top and peppered one leg all the way from the mule-ear pulls of the gunman’s stove-pipe boot to his waist. A wild-eyed look swept over the gunny’s acne-ravaged, pockmarked face.
“Hellfire and damnation, Roscoe. Did you hear what that son of a bitch just said?” Priest yelped.
Brother Roscoe’s arrogant demeanor changed in less than half the time it would take to blow out a kerosene lamp. His head cocked to one side, hand hovering over his cross-draw weapon, the leader of the Pickett boys glared at me from one bloodshot eye. “Shut your drunken, stupid mouth, Priest,” he snapped. Then to me, he growled, “What the hell ’er you talkin’ ’bout, Dodge? We don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no killings over on Devils River.”
I shot him another slight grin. “You’re a lying stack of walking horse dung, Roscoe. We tracked you boys all the way from the scene of the killings right to the spots where you’re standing this very instant. Now, I’m a reasonable man. Be more’n happy to entertain the possibility of taking you to Fort Worth for suitable trial and hanging, long as you give up your weapons, right by-God now, then let us slap you in shackles and chains.” Under my breath, I whispered to no one in particular, “You’ll never do it, though, will you, you son of a bitch? Now, jerk that smoke wagon and give me a reason to send you straight to Satan.”
Roscoe Pickett’s feral eyes flicked from side to side as though trying to look through me. A twitching hand still hovered over his pistol’s bone grip. He took a half step back toward the cantina’s porch. The entire trio sucked away from me and moved ever so slightly in the direction of the tavern’s entrance like a small, nervous, human wave.
“You jus’ said ‘we’ and ‘us.’ Where’s them others, Dodge?” Roscoe snarled. “Got some more men with you? Where are they?”
“It’s enough you know that my posse’s here and can come if I need them. Now pitch all your pistols, knives, hideout guns, and such out here in the street. Then step away from Arturo’s front door and get your faces down in the dirt where they belong.”
Roscoe’s lips twisted into an angry, tense sneer. “Damned if we will. Ain’t givin’ up my gun to no man. Gonna have to use that long-barreled shooter a yern, Dodge.”
“Me, neither,” Priest growled. “Keepin’ my pistol fer damned sure.”
I could easily see the belligerence of the coming fight grow in their intoxicated eyes before any of them had even made the slightest move toward their weapons. Then, from nowhere, the mute Cullen Pickett’s hand suddenly dropped to the ivory grips of the Smith & Wesson Russian model shooter snugged high and crosswise against his left hip.
A horror-stricken Roscoe tried to wave his unthinking brother off, but before either man could clear leather, the Winchester thundered, bucked, and slapped a massive blue whistler into the bony, centermost part of the elder Pickett’s chest. Sixty grains of spent black powder delivered a 395-grain chunk of pure lead into Roscoe’s breastbone, and from thence out his back and into the wall behind him. A fist-sized wad of the man’s blood and splintered bits of rib bone followed the bullet. The club-like blow knocked the stunned killer backward onto the porch amidst a cloud of swirling wood fragments.
The barrel of Cullen’s cocked weapon had almost topped his gun leather’s front lip when the second ear-splitting blast from my rifle punched a hole in the man’s forehead just above his left eye. The red-hot bullet plowed a furrow through half his addled brain, ricocheted around inside the man’s skull. The massive slug knocked his palm-leaf hat off when it exited through the top of his head, then carved a blood-spattered hole in the roof above. In spite of being dead where he stood, Cullen’s handgun went off. The blast ripped the entire face out of his holster. The wayward shot kicked up a flying cloud of dirt a few paces into the windblown street. Woman-killing scum went down like all the bones had been jerked out of his body at the same time.